China in revolution
The Beijing Spring • April 17-20: First student demonstrations commemorating Hu Yaobang: over 100,000 people in Tiananmen Square on April 19. First repression takes place. • April 21: Students attempt to invade the Great Hall of the People • April 22: Hu Yaobang's funeral. In spite of a ban on demonstrations, students occupy Tiananmen Square. The movement takes off in other cities. • April 24: Students boycott courses. • April 27: 500,000 demonstrate in Beijing, with workers beginning to join the
CHINA TODAY is in the throes of revolution. The crisis has even manifested some classic features of dual power. Protesters have taken over the centre of
CHINA
This article by Gregor Benton was written after discussions with veteran Chinese Trotskyist
Wang Fanxi, before the army clampdown and massacres. (See also article on page 28)
Beijing, forcing Gorbachev and the Chinese party leaders movement.
• May 4: 70th anniversary of the 1919 to enter the Great Hall of the People by the back door, student demonstration; 300,000 demand and they have usurped the functions of the police in large a dialogue with the government and press freedom, with support from jourparts of the capital. The uprising has spread to all social nalists (see /V 164). First big demonstraclasses, unlike past upsurges of dissent against the
• May 5: Zhao Ziyang comes out in regime, which never succeeded in bringing large favour of talks. Students start going numbers of industrial workers out onto the streets.
• May 13: Beginning of the hunger strike by 1,000 students in Tiananmen Square.
• May 15: Gorbachev arrives in Beijing.
Tens of thousands of students occupy
• May 16: Deng Xiaoping/Gorbachev talks. Gorbachev's itinerary changed because of demonstrations, now with a strong workers' presence.
• May 17: A million people march in
Beijing demanding Premier Li Peng's resignation.
• May 18: Another million demonstrate.
• May 19: Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng meet with protestors. Hunger strike suspended. Li Peng calls on the army to restore order". Martial law proclaimed
• May 20/21: Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants come out into Beijing's streets to stop any army intervention.
Discussions between students and soldiers. 100,000 demonstrate in Shanghai, 300,000 in Nanking, 200,000 in
Shenzhen.
May 21: In the biggest march of its history, a million people in Hong Kong demonstrate in solidarity.
• May 22: Beijing still paralyzed with a million people still demonstrating. Solidarity demonstration in Macao.
• May 25: Army chiefs pledge allegiance to Li Peng. The struggle inside the CCP seems to be going in his favour. First signs of the movement flagging.
• May 26: Rumours that Zhao Ziyang is
• May 27: Student leaders announce that the movement will end on May 30, a decision that is not unanimous.
• May 28: 100,000 demonstrators in
Beijing against threats of repression.
Again, a million march in Hong Kong.
• May 29: A million people in Beijing erect a Statue of Democracy.
• May 30: Deng charges Zhao Ziyang with alleged "political crimes". First arrests of worker and student leaders.
• May 31: Press clampdown. Around students pledge to continue occupation until June 20 National Peoples' Congress.
• June 2-3: People's Army moves in:
thousands dead and wounded. *
VEN SO, the most likely outcome of the present turmoil is the continuation of the regime. Either through repression, in which case
[premier] Li Peng and [supreme leader]
Deng Xiaoping will stay in power. Or through negotiation with the protest movement, in which case a "reforming" section of the leadership will take power, grouped around party leaders Zhao Ziyang and Wan Li. The main reason why the revolution cannot yet overthrow bureaucratic rule in its entirety is because it lacks a strong leadership and a comprehensive political programme that could provide the basis for an
George Bush in Washington, Lee Tenghui in Taiwan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow have welcomed the protest movement for different reasons - Bush and Lee because they can paint it as a movement for capitalist restoration, and Gorbachev because he can present it as an expression of support for glasnost and perestroika.
But, at the same time, all three men are afraid of the crowds on the streets in China, for they cannot be sure what sort of power the turmoil will produce if it is allowed to run its full course. Gorbachev is worried that a similar movement might engulf Red Square if his own reforms begin to fail. Bush and Lee proclaim in public that the May events are a movement for "free enterprise", but they and their advisors must know that this may turn out to be wishful present crisis, none of which can be construed as just a wish for capitalism. One is the great tide of corruption that has swept China since Deng started his reforms, and the increasingly intolerable burden that ordinary Chinese must shoulder as the corruption spreads and the reforms falter.
Deng's intention in the late 1970s, when he took power after the fall of the Maoist
"Gang of Four", was to create a class of prosperous businessmen as a cushion for his government. By "letting some people get rich first", he hoped to spur on the spirit of free enterprise as a way of accumulating wealth. But instead he has created a class of speculators and parasites who get rich not by honest business but by "hegemonizing the market" through the manipulation of party ties.
Corruption, bribery and nepotism
China today has an economy that is midway between state control and the market. Two sorts of prices operate: fixed state prices, which are low, and high market prices. Party and government profiteers take advantage of the difference by buying goods cheap in the state sector and reselling them dear on the market.
Not all party members are in on this fraud, and not all government functionaries get the chance to milk the system. The corruption grows in proportion to the opportunity. It is greatest among relatives of leaders at the very top, such as the children of Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, who are inheriting wealth and power in China like in an imperial dynasty. This is why most party members and officials, following the lead from below, back the protest against nepotism, bribery, corruption, and the outright theft of public goods. According to a recent survey, even before the present protests, 42% of Chinese saw corruption as the number one problem in Chinese society. Today, this view has spread to the overwhelming majority of people.
Popular anger and indignation run wide and deep in the country. Some leading intellectuals believe that the solution to the problem of corruption is to abolish the two- 3 track system and introduce unqualified cap-
International Viewpoint #165 • June 12, 1989
CHINA italism to China, in order to cut away the breeding ground for fraud. But there is no sign that the majority of younger protesters have completely lost faith in the socialist future. On the contrary, many young dissenters see capitalism and "complete Westernization" not as the way out but as the way in for greed and immorality. This is why they responded so warmly to Gorbachev, who seems to them to represent the possibility of reform and renewal within socialism.
Democracy and national sovereignty
The second main cause of the ferment is the thirst for democracy. This is particularly great among students and intellectuals, but aspects of the struggle for democracy — in particular the demands for freedom of expression, press, assembly and strike — are also relevant to the wider movement, connected to the fight against privilege and corruption.
The third main cause of popular resentment is the evident growing indifference of the present regime to issues of national reforms, he said that by opening doors to the West, China could learn new methods of management and production, and sorely needed funds would flow in to help build and modernize China's industry. Seventy years ago, on May 4, 1919, a movement of radical students grew up to protest at Japan's claim to a part of Shandong province. Today, it seems to many Chinese that
China's rulers are prepared to give away whole chunks of the country, especially on
Hainan (an island-province nearly the size of Taiwan), parts of which are being leased to Japan for 80 years.
"What a loss of sovereignty," students told the Guardian's John Gittings, "when we used to make such a fuss about little scraps along our borders." So patriotic contempt for what is widely viewed as "slavish subordination" to Japan and the West is a second plank in the platform of the uprising. The open door is seen by party officials as a main chance to get rich by acting as modern-day compradors for the foreigners, especially the Japanese, who are past masters in the art of corrupting govern-
Today it is clear that Deng Xiaoping's reforms have failed. Already the government has instituted an economic freeze in an attempt — probably vain — to put a stop to inflation, now running at nearly 30%. Farmers unable to afford fertilizer and feed-grain at present inflated prices are producing less grain and slaughtering their pigs. Eighty million Chinese face severe food-shortages; 20 million face starvation. Fifty million people squeezed out of agriculture by the earlier rapid growth in rural productivity now constitute a new "floating class" that grabs what work it can in the cities: jobs to which urban workers are no longer prepared to stoop, mainly in building, transport and sanitation.
But now, with Deng's new freeze, these declassed farmers are being chased back to the villages, where they will find it hard to make ends meet. China under Mao knew starvation too, but in his day the gap between the great mass of people and the tiny handful of privileged was far less conspicuous than it is now.
If Zhao Ziyang emerges as the new strongman, there is no evidence that he can provide a fresh direction for the Chinese economy and society. He is not seen as a Gorbachev, charismatic and competent, and he is China's best-known nepotist. He has even been criticized in the Politburo for allowing his relatives to engage in profiteering. He pioneered the reforms that have
Neither self-reliance nor the open door policy
For a time, Deng and Zhao's policies worked, and were popular. China's national income doubled in the decade of the reforms. People enjoyed more personal freedoms than ever before. But Deng and
Zhao's problem was the opposite of Mao's. Mao created a China that was poor but largely equal (except at the very top, where people lived in fabulous luxury). Deng and
Zhao have created a China that is less poor, and a littler freer, but outrageously unequal. Both strategies produce strains and tensions in Chinese society that can be contained for a few years, but will eventually explode in revolutions. (Mao was right when he said that China will need a new revolution once every few years.)
The students' demands 1 To reevaluate Hu Yaobang's contribution and approve his appreciation of the great harmony existing between democracy and freedom. 2 To severely punish the thugs who attacked the students and the masses. Those responsible to present their apologies and compensation to the victims. 3 To speed up the publication of the Law on the Press, authorize newspapers written by citizens and guarantee freedom of the 4 State leaders must make public their incomes and inheritance, including those of their family, to the people and to the country as a whole. An inquiry to be held into corruption, with all the details pub5 State leaders implicated in policy errors concerning education should make an official self-criticism in front of the whole peosubstantially increased, alongside teach6 The campaign against "bourgeois liberalization" to be reevaluated, with total rehabilitation for those citizens who have suffered unwarranted injustices. 7 We strongly demand that there is an impartial and truthful assessment of this democratic and patriotic movement. *
Students' Organizing Committee, Beijing
Without a change in the international environment, the Chinese revolution is doomed to pass at regular intervals into crisis. When Mao took power, he told the world that China would create socialism on its own terms, and after the split with Moscow he repeated Stalin's dictum that socialism is possible in one country. Today, with China beginning to throw itself open to the world like India or the Philippines, many people look back nostalgically on Mao's era of self-reliance (though they also remember the crushing poverty, the terror, and the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution). But China's revolutionary socialists believe that neither self-reliance nor the open door can solve China's basic dilemma, which is that socialism can only prosper on a world scale.
The strategy of revolutionary socialists in China consists of four main thrusts. First, to fight alongside the workers and students against all top bureaucrats, and to discourage illusions in any of the present leaders. Second, to fight for socialist democracy. Third, to fight against any attempt to restore capitalism in China. And fourthly, to fight for independent organizations of the students, workers and soldiers, with a view to uniting them in one body. As the struggle against bureaucratic rule develops, this body would form the basis for a new, independent National to the Chinese people. *